Weathered Stone
by d i s c o FCKN ludicolo
Summary: RosettaxMist. Rosetta prays for her beloved Raguna to find the fabled White Stone so the two can spend the rest of their lives together. Little does she know that with a bit of Mist's generosity, she will find herself starting to fall for her rival.
1. The White Stone

Title: Weathered Stone.

Author: d i s c o FCKN ludicolo

Summary: RosettaxMist. Rosetta prays for her beloved Raguna to find the fabled White Stone, so the two can spend the rest of their lives together. Little does she know that with a bit of Mist's generosity, she will find herself starting to fall for her rival.

Eyes of red wine poured over the mahogany west front of the cathedral. Icy blue ribbons of water crystal encircled the midsection of the two colossal pillars that towered far above the ornate entrance. A golden cross dissected a circular emblem crafted from the same rare metal, slicing it into fourths like a freshly baked pie. She once had the nerve to question why the cross nailed above the church's gaudy door had a circle melded into its design. Figuring it was merely for aesthetic purposes, Rosetta was surprised to hear from Wesley that the peculiar symbol of faith was meant to infuse worship of the Lord with the harmony of Earthen magic. A peaceful union between the two ideals. It sounded like a load of buffamo crap to her.

Inhaling deeply, she held her breath as she pushed open the heavy door. An old superstition had leaked across the town ever since her grandfather had been a child. Hold your breath while entering the chapel, walk the entire length of the crimson rug that unfurled itself right up to the edge of the altar where two lit candles buried in their golden holders sat on either end of the marble pedestal clothed in white silk, then, with your face turned blue from lack of oxygen, blow out the candle to your right whilst making a wish. Any wish at all, and it was certain to come true. Of course, one had to have the guts to extinguish the flame and risk having one's ego and pride injured by the scolding Wesley was likely to administer on them.

About halfway down the aisle of pews gleaming like the surface of a puddle of spilt oil in the dim lighting, Rosetta let out a loud sigh, releasing her breath and any promise of ever gaining her truest desire.

"I don't know what I want.. so whatever," she whispered into the holy setting before dropping down into the polished seat of a nearby pew and closing he eyelids softly. Prayer did not come easily for her, as she never really knew how to start up a conversation with someone who only listened and could never be bothered to respond, but the blond haired woman racked her brain anyway. Partially wondering if Wesley was watching her bow her head and smiling that content smile of his that made her want to tell him to take off the pretty dress he seemed so thrilled to don day after day and change into something that wouldn't make her realize why Lara never had a mother, Rosetta began, _'Hi God, it's so damn early. Are you even awake? Well, shut up and listen for a minute. I have some.. er.. confessions to make. Just today I cursed at least a dozen times, called Lukas a moron because he wrote a poem about how my hair reminds him of corn, seriously, who the hell does that? Oh, and I cursed again right there if you're keeping score. Am I winning, by the way? Well, whatever.'_

Pausing briefly to give the Lord above a few seconds to absorb what she had just rambled on about, she peeked out of one eye to make sure Wesley wasn't sending any unwanted friendliness her way to discover that he had long ago ascended the stone staircase leading to his and Lara's housing arrangements. _'Okay, here comes some more, if you're ready. So, today I called Wesley a homosexual, inside my mind, of course. I think it still counts, though.'_

Pondering for a moment to see if she had revealed every ounce of her horrid deeds, she couldn't think of anything else to add, so instead she went on to a different course of action, _'So, now I need your help on something.. Or someone. You know Raguna, right? He comes in here fairly often, probably praying for the spirits of the monsters he's defeated to find peace. He's a really nice guy, I'm sure you know. I just.. want you to help me out on one little thing.'_

Without even noticing, Rosetta suddenly switched from pure, tranquil silence to mumbling her prayer quietly beneath her breath, "Please help him find the stone. I want him to find it before it's too late. He's been hanging around that damned Mist girl way too much lately and I don't like it. So, if you could also please kill her off for me before their relationship turns into any--"

"Hey, are you talking about me? That's sort of strange," a familiar voice, sweet as syrup, trickled through Rosetta's ears as she felt warm breath tickle the side of her face where the speaker's mouth was currently situated.

Toppling backward out of shock, Rosetta's left shoulder and elbow cracked down upon the seat of the pew as her eyes shot open to stare grimly upon the gentle features of the girl she had just been trying to hire God to assassinate. "W-what are you doing here?!" she stammered, failing to regain control of her emotions as she felt an odd mixture of rage and fear sweep through her.

The blue eyed girl stuck her pointer finger up to her chin, contemplating the answer she would give the other, "Ah. I can't recall. Oh well, good-bye then."

And with that, Mist started toward the grand door of the cathedral, her flax colored hair swaying behind her as if she didn't have a care in the world despite the fact that she was also obviously in love with Raguna and had her own farm to tend to.

Sighing out of relief once the last of Mist's slender fingers had slipped past the partially open door as she exited the church, Rosetta gained back her usual fiery spirit. "What a weird girl, I'll never understand what he sees in her even if I live to be as old as Leo. And she can't even remember to close the door."

Pushing herself up from her uncomfortable position on the pew, she made her way quickly toward the door that arched skyward to the heavens. "I hope one day she forgets to shut the door to her house and a wolf breaks in to finish that pathetic moron up once and for all," she grumbled quietly, listening to the soft padding of her feet against the rug.

Stretching one arm out to connect the palm of her hand with the mahogany surface, she was about to slam it back into its proper place when the all-to familiar voice chimed up again, "Oh, now I remember!" Delicate fingers laced around the edge of the door, followed by the serene face and eventually the rest of her rival as Mist returned into what was becoming a painful migraine for Rosetta.

"Thanks for holding the door open for me Rosetta, you're very kind," Mist, with her infernal, soothing aura, sent a fury of hatred through the short-tempered woman. "I remember what I came here for."

"Oh, well thank God for that," sarcasm dripped through her every word, though it seemed as if Mist was unable to pick up on her tone of voice as the girl continued to approach her.

Once she had closed the distance between them, though still couldn't figure out how to close the door behind her, Mist continued to speak, "I heard from Raguna that you were looking for a stone or something."

"A White Stone," she corrected through gritted teeth. It wasn't just any old stone that she sought after, and she couldn't expect a moron like Mist to ever comprehend the beauty of the object of lore.

"Yes, that, the White Stone," the farmer woman concluded, with a proud smile which seemed to say that she had already known what it was titled, though it was doubtful that she would be able to recall the simple name in a few moments. "Raguna was talking about how you were looking for it."

Eyebrow twitching in irritation, anger almost appeared to crackle off her skin like an electrical discharge, "So? Raguna tells me things all of the time. Just last month he told me he had amnesia and had lost all of his memories. It was very insightful, really made me understand who he is and where he's coming from."

Impervious to insults and sarcasm, Mist nodded with an understanding smile. "So, I decided to help you look for the stone. Well, first I checked the 'lost and found box'. I couldn't find it there, but then I decided to check this block of ice in Toros cave. Lucky guess, I suppose, because look what I found.."

A gasp escaped her throat as the hopeless girl produced a sparkling stone the color of pure, undisturbed snowfall from her dress pocket.

_'What?! That moron actually found the White Stone? God, I can't let her hang onto it any longer! She'll probably lose it.. Or find out what I want to use it for and decide to use it for her own evil purposes. No! I can't let that happen! But, how am I supposed to get it from her? I can't just grab it and run.. She's probably faster than me,' _as Rosetta continued to obsess and plot over how to gain ownership of the fabled item she missed hearing her rival call her name several times in an attempt to gain her attention.

"Rosetta.. Rosetta.. Rosetta!"

"What is it!" she shot out before she could hold her tongue.

Feeling the smooth texture of cold stone press into the palm of her hand half a moment later, she was dumbfounded when she heard Mist answer, "You can have it. I don't need stones, I have a bunch on the farm and there's always new ones popping up. So, go ahead and take it."

Mouth hanging ajar as she stood awestruck, Rosetta nearly crumpled to the floor in a heap of amazement and disbelief as her fingers clasped over the precious stone. "I-I.. Thank you," her voice cracked out, almost unable to say the word of gratitude to her arch-nemesis.

"It's just a stone, no big deal," the other replied, shrugging before turning to leave again.

As the angelic figure of generosity disappeared through the doorway once more, Rosetta couldn't help but notice how the morning light streaming through the stain glass windows stroked Mist's fair toned skin and hair, causing it to glow faintly like a candle flame.

Relaxing to enjoy her moment of victory, the hard-headed woman drifted off into her thoughts again, _'Hmm.. That was nice of her. And she really looked pretty today, I wonder if she's doing something different with her hair. I wish I could run my fingers across it.. Maybe I could wish for that next time I try the old 'church-candle-extinguish-trick'.'_

_'Wait!'_ alarm suddenly struck her like an arrow to the heart. _'Why am I thinking about that moron? Eww.. Must just be glad to finally get the stone. That's it.'_

Relief pulsing through her veins again, she leaned back against the door, accidentally closing it in the process of trying to steal away a bit of physical comfort as her brain continued to focus on the stone. _'Okay, so all I need to do now is put it in a place where Raguna will find it first, maybe his mailbox or something. Then, when he gets it he can give it to me and our fates will be intertwined together forever, just like how the old myth goes.'_

Another frantic wave of panic knocked the air right out of her, though she couldn't fathom where it had come from, after all, she had the stone now, so there was nothing to worry over. _'Yeah, I have it now. Mist gave it to me, so there's nothing to be concerned about.. Wait?! Did she give it to me?! Could that have.. Have..'_

"Oh, God damnit! Shit, shit, shit, shit.." Rosetta thrust her beloved stone to the floor, and with a muffled clattering it skidded across the deep red rug, fractured light from the stain glass windows tainting its white coloring with hues of mixed sapphire and maroon.

She finally knew what she wanted.


	2. Gigant Hot Springs

Title: Weathered Stone.

Author: d i s c o FCKN ludicolo

Summary: Rosetta attempts to cleanse her mind of Mist by paying a visit to the Hot Springs. Little does she know that her newfound 'object of desire' happens to be cleaning herself there as well.

It was a large, brazen structure that she stood outside later that afternoon. With the texture and coloring of a hazelnut, it appeared to flow seamlessly with the autumn atmosphere. Peaks of windows, small and box-shaped, as well as the ledge of a balcony loomed overhead, although the building was not threatening in the least despite its bulky stature. Like a husky mother-figure, it stood watch over the second market district of town, a guardian and protector, offering all it had to give to strangers and friends alike.

An entrance about as formidable as that of a tent's was the only thing preventing Rosetta from taking a much needed dip in the relaxing spa system that Melody had designed and constructed (with a slight bit of her neighbor Neumann's assistance, though the eccentrically dressed woman had refused for him build on an extra bathing room to her business when the lecherous man had insisted that she add a room just for him and Sabrina).

She entered the hot springs facility with only one thought on her mind and a sour expression smothering her pleasant features, _'God, Melody should have just let him tack on his own private room, I feel bad for Raguna, always having to wash himself in the presence of that saggy old-'_

"Hello Rosetta! Here to take bath?" the high-pitched, excited voice of Melody broke her thoughts about as fast as she had broke (or sprained, she couldn't remember and could care less) Lukas's arm the last time he had tried to wrap it around her while spewing out sickening poetry from Romeo and Juliet or some crap like that. All she knew was that the love-obsessed moron enjoyed it, and by extent that made her absolutely despise it beyond all measure.

Sighing, she stepped closer to the front desk, almost unable to meet cauldron-brewing phony in the eye as she spoke, taking refuge by weakly making eye contact with the woman's humongous witch hat, "Yeah, I guess.. Need to clear my head right now Melody.."

Too unsettled to even jokingly ask if she could borrow a rubber ducky to escort her into the bath, she wasn't surprised to hear that the pink-haired witch had noticed her attitude change. "Is something wrong? You look a little depressed.. Hm. I know what'll cheer you up! How about an extra thirty minutes in the springs, on me?"

Rolling her eyes at the generous offer, Rosetta could have grumbled out a sarcastic comment about how there wasn't a time limit on how long one could spend in the hot springs, and that if Melody wanted to kick her out she'd have to drag her naked, dripping body out of the bath first; but, instead she veered off onto a different course that better fit her mood, "No, that's fine.. Just, if you happen to have any Poison Powder lying around, could you let me borrow some? I'm thinking about offing myself soon.."

Tossing ten gold coins onto the counter, she turned to the left spa entrance, listening to the cheery voice of Melody call out behind her, "Sorry, I don't! Enjoy your bath Rosetta!"

_'Stupid wannabe-witch.. Where does she get off telling me to enjoy things? The only thing I'd enjoy right about now is a little alone time. Maybe with Mist there.. Just the two of us, it would be perfect. I wonder if she's ever even been kissed before? Probably not, ah, but that would just make it more exciting—Eww! What the hell! Shut up, Rosetta! Shut up! Get your tongue.. I mean brain out of Mist for just one second! God!'_

Slamming her head into the wooden post of the doorway that led to the women's bath hard enough to knock out the average person (but she was feeling particularly hard-headed that day, thankfully), the blonde pulled an arm up to rest against her forehead, not realizing that in her clenched fist she held the object of her torment and struggles. The white stone, in all its innocence, sat patiently in the trembling grip of its owner.

"Rosetta? Strange seeing you here. You know, you can just knock like a normal person before entering, you don't have to slam your head into the wall."

Losing full control upon hearing the voice of her lifelong rival through the heavy steam and gushing hot water, the milky white stone clattered to the marble flooring, tumbling down step after step until it dove straight into the pool of bath water. And all she could think of was: _'Oh God, she's not wearing anything! Damn, I have got to get in there..'_

Charging at full force in the opposite direction of Mist and her gorgeous nudity, she didn't stop until she heard Melody, "Wow, that was the fastest bath I've ever seen! And you're already dry too.. Wow, amazing!"

Halting in her frenzied race to avoid Mist, especially a naked Mist, at all costs, Rosetta noticed that her hand was planted firmly on the door handle, so she released it quickly to turn toward the witch. "Oh, ha ha! I forgot to take a bath! How funny! Ha ha," she tried, her laughter as pathetic and fake as Melody's magic act.

"You forgot? Well, you shouldn't waste your money! Go back in and enjoy your bath before it gets cold! Get it? That was a joke, funny right?" with actual, carefree laughter, Melody rushed out from behind her place at the counter and began to usher Rosetta back into the women's bath.

Allowing herself to be guided soothingly into the spa for the first couple of steps, such was the power of Melody's kind words and friendly jokes, she shook her head until she was fully aware of the situation. As they were passing through the doorway, she extended both of her arms out, grasping the edge of the entrance to keep herself from being forcibly shoved into the bath. "No, no! That's fine! I don't really need to take a bath anyway! I smell great, check for yourself!" she protested while the ever-helpful witch continued to attempt to push her into the bath against her will.

"Nonsense! You paid full price for a nice hot springs experience, and I'm not about to have you let that go to waste!"

"Fine! Then let me take a bath in the men's room." Compromising wasn't one of her strong-points, but she was running out of options fast.

Chuckling lightly from behind, Melody responded, "Now, you know the rules Rosetta. 'No male or female may use the opposite-gender's facilities.' And that's that. So, unless you've secretly been hiding a giant part of your identity from me and the rest of the town all these years, I won't allow you to bathe in the men's area. Besides, I already have customers using it."

"Damn it! I don't care! Let them see! What the hell's up with this old-fashioned, bore of a town anyway? Those boys could use a bit of a show every now and then! Poor Raguna, he's been harvesting a lot of watermelons lately, he probably has to use them as a substitute for a real woman's melons!" was her final screech of protest before she was practically thrown head-first into the water.

Soaked to the bone in an instant, she began to grumble loudly, "What the hell? She could have at least let me strip down first.. That stupid-"

"Hi Rosetta. You dropped this.." Mist told her softly, placing the lost stone she neither cared for nor cherished anymore into her open palm.

"What, my pride?" she said with all the sarcasm she could muster while floating in a pool of piping hot water with her skirt billowing up enough that if Lukas had been there to witness it, he surely would have died of blood loss from the nose. Then, she began to think, which was proving to be more of a hazard than anything else that day, _'Okay, so, I got the stone.. A second time.. From Mist.. In the same day.. Oh hell. And that must mean..'_

A side-glance to her right told her all she needed to know. _'Yes. Naked. Very naked. Not that I'm complaining..'_

"Why are you taking a bath with all of your clothes on? It looks sort of silly," commented the sweet voice that belonged to an even sweeter girl.

Eyesight trailing downward, she looked down at her drenched shirt, suddenly aware of the fact that it was white and made of thin fabric, two parts of the equation whose result happened to be a transparent window into parts that she didn't feel comfortable showing, but didn't mind Mist staring at. That thought made her stomach tie up into knots, unfortunately.

Covering her chest with one arm and using the other to paddle herself toward the shallow end of the pool, Rosetta could feel her face turning a deep crimson as she explained, "Oh, my clothes.. Were dirty too. Also, Melody's a witch with a capital 'B' if you must know. Now turn around while I get undressed.. Unless you really want to watch, of course. Do you?"

"No, not really, but I don't see why it matters. We'll be bathing together anyway, and we're both girls, so it's not like we haven't already seen everything before," Mist rationalized, gaining a stone-cold glare from her rival as she turned to face the opposite direction merely to humor the other woman.

Pulling both her lace shirt and cotton under-shirt over the top of her head, she used the moment of silence to try and make sense of the events that had progressed thus far, _'So, it seems like she's immune to the White Stone enchantment. But knowing Mist, she's probably too dense to realize anything's changed. I guess if I really want to find out, I'll have to test it out myself. I can't just up and say, "Hey, let's make out in the hot springs, so I can see if you love me." Eww.. that sounds like something Lukas would say, no, I definitely can't tell her that!'_

Finally pealing off the last remnants of her clothing, she decided to leave the silver pentagram shaped clips securely fashioned to her hair. They were part of the signature look that formed the incredible beauty known as 'Rosetta', after all.

Swirling around to face Mist, she almost jumped straight out of the bathing pool when she found that the other hadn't turned away as she had promised.

"Why the hell are you watching me? I told you to turn around, you moron!" blushing faintly, she nearly choked on the bitterness of her own words spoken to such a lovely individual.

Striking her famed pose, Mist tilted her head ever so slightly to the side in contemplation, her pale lips open only a fraction of a centimeter, and the pointer finger of her left hand just barely grazing across her delicate chin. "Is that why I was turned around? I must have forgot and turned back to ask you.. Hm, oh well."

Stroking at the water with one hand, the gentle farmer's eyes glistened with a hidden energy that Rosetta had never noticed before. Coughing into her fist to cover up any trace of a smile that might have spread across her face at seeing yet another side of her rival, she changed her tone to something less enraged, "That's just like you. No wonder Raguna's head-over-heels in love with you; some guys just love the dumb chick that they can save from the scary dragon."

"Oh, yeah, like that one time he saved me from the Grimoa dragon at Mt. Gigant."

"That was last week, Mist, we all talked about it. I was like: "Wow, I can't believe you defeated the Grimoa" like five million times to Raguna. We're all over it now, get with the times, now it's all about how Raguna just got the pass to Misty Bloom Cave," she told Mist with more than a bit of weariness in her voice, as her eyes strained to remain on the girl's face.

Meanwhile, just behind the foot-thick wall that separated the two bathing rooms, a group of young men were clustered around the thinnest portion of the dividing wall.

"Shh! Shut up Nicholas! I can't hear Mist talk!" came the loud shushing of a curious boy by the name of Zavier. Not surprisingly, the self-proclaimed 'treasure hunter' was still as dry as could be, a white towel hanging loosely around his waist just in case Melody walked in and he was forced to play the part of a person who actually cared about his hygiene to keep her from suspecting anything.

"Who cares? Why do you want to listen to her talk about Raguna anyway?" the young boy who had been called out for being noisy questioned. He was still fully clothed, donning the usual feathered bandanna around the side of his head and his trademark black tank top beneath a loose-fitting white t-shirt smudged with dirt and flecks of sand from the beach.

"They're talking about me? I wonder why.." a modest Raguna pondered over their conversation topic, only happy that the two women were actually on speaking terms. It seemed like a big step for them, and he hoped that perhaps they could become friends.

"Shut up! Both of you! Mist's about to say something!" Zavier, with his ear plastered against the wall, shot them a glare.

"How do you kno-" Nicholas began before a grimy hand was rudely shoved over his mouth.

It seemed that the sandy blond haired boy had a sixth sense for judging when the love of his life was about to speak, because back on the women's side of the bath, Mist had just floated over to Rosetta with a shy smile and a cautious voice, "Hey, Rosetta, do you think you could help me scrub my back..? I fell into a puddle of mud earlier today and I just want to make sure I get it all off.."

Eyebrows knitting together in concentration, the fiery tempered woman tried to remain calm and casual, "What? Pssh.. Please, why don't you ask your boyfriend Zavier to do it for you?" Obviously she had failed on both counts, but had never been able to help herself when it came to being aggressive.

"Good idea!" a loud voice of agreement came from the other side of the wall, but it went unnoticed by Mist, for the main reason that everything went unnoticed by her. Rosetta was too caught up in a twist of pleasure and self-loathing as she took the washcloth that Mist had been tempting her with and dunked it beneath the steaming ripples of crystal clear water that distorted her new love's image only enough to prevent her from getting a good look at what lay beneath. Letting the absorbent cloth resurface after a few seconds, she wrung out the excess water with both hands and was sucked into a vortex of breathtaking lust and desire as she ran the thin fabric down the slender shoulders, the perfect curvature of her spine, and across shadows that touched the outskirts of Mist's pale skin tone in the flickering light of candles hung on posts around the room. Her fingertips could almost touch the other girl, but it was as if she were trapped behind a thin, glass encasement, able to view the true beauty of the world, yet never given the privilege to break through, shatter her own confines into a million peaces and let the wind scatter them away to far off places to be forgotten when she came face to face with what she truly wanted.

Mist turned around to face her with a subtle expression of perplexity and words on her mind that she was about to let spill from her lips, "I think you got it all. Thanks."

"Sorry, when someone gives me a task I don't just half-ass it," she stated to help cut the tension that, most likely, only she felt at that moment. As she spoke, a patch of dirt that had gathered up into an annoying clump on Mist's perfect cheek happened to catch her attention. It bothered her beyond reason to see her rival's elegance tainted, so she took up the cloth again. Without explanation, she carefully lifted Mist's chin up with one hand to bring it closer toward her vision and began to gently scrub at the minor imperfection.

"Hm? Is there something on my face?"

For once, there actually was, so Rosetta had no problem telling her, "Just this big splotch of dirt, God, do you roll in the mud for fun or something? Seriously, pick a cleaner hobby, maybe like bathing more often."

When the sapphire blue eyes in front of her shut tight to avoid being poked accidentally by the intense rubbing, Rosetta couldn't help but blush as she thought, _'Damn, she looks so cute with her eyes closed, and why does she have to leave her mouth partially open like that? It's like how she leaves doors open.. Something.. or someone might creep in without an invitation..'_

Like an explosive fire attack from a pesky Ignis, she felt herself unable to hold back the inferno. There, standing fully naked into a pool of warm water, Mist's hair streaming like soft silk threads in the passing waves, she would wrap her arms around that graceful neck and push her back against the edge of the pool. Mist's lips would be warm and moist from the humidity of the bathhouse, and hers would be hungry, an unstoppable force.

While she began to carry out her unplanned actions to steal away her love's first kiss, the boys on the other side of the wall had other motives.

"I don't hear anything! I don't hear anything!" Zavier cried out desperately, both hands gripped around his head as he fell into a full panic.

"So what? I couldn't hear anything anyways. These walls are so thick you'd have to have a six sense or something to know what they were saying," Nicholas tried to restore calm to the room, but failed as Zavier's face continued to grow grimmer by the second.

"She's done it.."

"Done what?" Raguna asked, out of politeness, because it appeared that Nicholas was still sullen over the eavesdropping boy's treatment as he continued to wipe at his mouth in attempts to clean away the foul taste.

"Drown her! Drowned Mist! Rosetta's always been jealous of her! Ah, the inhumanity!" Weeping into his arms, Zavier rushed toward the doorway, letting out pitiful sounding sobs every step of the way.

"Don't you think you're over.." recognizing that the fellow cave explorer wasn't about to listen to reason, Raguna continued nonetheless, "..reacting.. Wait!"

"Those two are crazy.." Nicholas concluded, joyfully noting that the hot springs was all his to do as he pleased now that the older boys had exited the room in a hurried sprint.

Way back in the land of girl on girl romance, Rosetta had just successfully cornered Mist against the rim of the bath, their reflections glittering off the surface of the pool; her face determined and smirking with victory, Mist's completely unaware and a picture of innocence.

She leaned in closely, slowing her circular motions of scrubbing as she tilted the tranquil face up further and leaned in; Zavier burst into the room with a finger pointed accusingly at his love's rival.

"Ah ha! I've caught you in the act of murder Miss Roset—What the hell is this?"

She had just enough time to freeze as she was caught in the act by none other than the brattiest, most stubborn boy in town. And also, sadly for her, known for being a total loudmouth. He stepped backward almost mechanically, jaw dropped as far as it could go, and eyes glazed over in shock and repulsion as if he had just seen his mother naked.

"Ahhhh!" He tore down the hallway, past a disgruntled Melody who lectured him about the importance of rules and following them.

Not about to let a witness escape without a fight, Rosetta lept out of the bath, grabbing a towel automatically, rather than willingly, as she would have preferred to catch him while completely nude than let him get away. Rocketing through the hallway after him, she watched in horror as he slipped out the door like a treacherous fish whom had just barely escaped capture. Dashing up to the front door of the Gigant Hot Springs, she blasted it open with one swing of her arm and was about to continue the hunt when a hand squeezed tightly around her wrist.

"Sorry, store policy, I can't let you leave dressed like that," Melody told her in as charming a voice as always.

"I don't care if I run out there in a towel! This is a life or death situation! Now let go, damn it!" She struggled with all her might against the witch's impeccably strong hold on her. For a scrawny, little girl she sure had the hands of a python; Rosetta felt a twinge of pity toward whatever unlucky bastard ended up in bed with the bathhouse serpent.

"Oh no, it's not that, I could care less if you rush out there naked, but that towel is Gigant Hot Spring's property. I can't just let you take it. Nope! Sorry," she said, shaking her head and beaming at her customer's foolish assumption, she dragged her back into the main entrance room.

"What the hell? But Zavier just ran out there with a towel on! Why not grab him?" She knew it wasn't the time to be interrogating Melody on her strange ways, but she couldn't help pointing out how fate had suddenly picked her as its punching bag that day.

"That was his towel. From home. His mother owns an inn, remember? Now, please go back and change before leaving the hot springs, thanks. And I hope you enjoyed your bath!"

Forced into the women's bath for the second time, she fell back into her usual pissed off grumbling, "Damn, bratty moron.. Wait until I get him alone.. I'm gonna take that stupid hat and shove it somewhere it'll actually look good on him.. Then take it out and feed it to him.."

Raguna blinked as he watched the towel clad store worker return into the womens-only bath to collect her things, exchanging a side glance with Melody.

Not missing a beat, Melody exclaimed, "So, I heard you got a pass to Misty Bloom Cave. Be careful in there! I hear it's dangerous! And cold too."

"Umm.. Thanks Melody.. You told me that yesterday, and the day before, but it's always nice to hear," he responded with a half-smile, wondering what in the world had caused the adventurous and fearless (well, when it came to naked ladies, especially Mist) Zavier to dart out of the bathhouse. _'Hmm.. I know he hates baths.. That must be it then. Yes, definitely.' _Deciding not to pry too much into his friend's bathing habits, the brown haired part-time farmer, part-time soldier left the hot springs without a second thought.


	3. The Mysterious Shell

Title: Weathered Stone.

Author: d i s c o FCKN ludicolo

Summary: You know what this fanfic needs? A BEACH EPISODE! Rosetta commissions Mei to perform an important task, but gets more than she bargained for.

Author's Note: As those of you who have perused my profile may already know, I discontinued this fanfic a few years ago due to declining interest for the story and characters. Like most first-time writers, I immediately gunned the engine and wrote myself directly into a wall.

Fortunately for you the yuri muses assaulted me one fateful summer's night and engendered my mind with renewed motivation to resume this story. It should be expected that the writing style has changed (I'm hesitant to say "improved", I'll let you be the judge of that), and I'm trying to tone down the humor to allow other facets of this story to shine. Hopefully that won't negatively affect your appreciation for this fanfic. More information is available on my newly updated profile regarding other things I've failed to mention. Now, without further ado..

* * *

Rosetta clomped raucous steps out of the sidewalk, feeling each shock's vibration fail to dislodge her locked jaw, instead discharging quivers on lips pinched taut as fully drawn bowstrings. Lips aimed to fell with venomous tongue the first person unfortunate enough to wander into the cross-hairs of her merciless gaze. _I'll never live this down. I'm dead, dead, dead.. Unless.. _Her agitated expression settled into a wry smile.

Clods of sand thrust up by her mad dash across the beach scattered in filmy puffs against the seabreeze. She hated running and honestly believed anyone who declared their undying love for the physical exercise equivalent of stabbing themselves in the lungs with a flat-headed screwdriver to be a lying bastard. But she didn't imagine Raguna enjoyed crawling through labyrinthine dungeons on a daily basis to water his ever-bearing strawberry fields. He did so because if he didn't society would fall to chaos and corruption. Or because of the strict strawberry tax she enforced if he wanted his produce delivered instead of used as projectiles against him.

At length, after casting far and wide about the shoreline, she found Mei huddled inside the mysterious shell. Its spiraling apex tapered about ten feet from its anchorage in the sand. The abandoned carapace glistened a garish orange she couldn't fathom nature contriving of its own devices. She stepped around overset spires the color of lapis lazuli, throwing a sidelong glance at the ones still jutting from the beach around the gargantuan conch like bright pink lampposts. Everything about this place spelled tourist trap, and it appeared to have caught its first victim.

Breathless, Rosetta approached the short leg hanging out the round aperture which served as the shell's sole entrance. The magenta heel of her sock and sandal clad foot rocking back and forth across the sand in all its lame, fashion-impaired glory.

"Did slumlord Ann finally give you the boot? ..Or are you taking the hermit-lifestyle literally now?" Rosetta asked dryly, crossing her arms against the bleak wind.

The wagging of her foot ceased, but otherwise no motion was given on Mei's part in response to her unexpected guest. "I'm listening to the ocean," she said in monotone.

Rosetta turned her head toward the surging whitecaps before her, then back to the shell. "Really now? I think you should turn it down a bit. I can hear it from all the way over here."

"Another ocean," Mei responded cryptically.

"What, is it like a remix or something?"

Rolling back on her heels, brows furled, she waited out the silence even when it became apparent that Mei wasn't taking any more questions. Which was fine, considering each answer she received only propagated ten more inquiries; and unlike Mei, she didn't have all day. In a couple hours she had to move a crate of Raguna's various miscellany about eighty feet to the shop and cull out all the inedible products. She had gotten the ingenious idea to market the weeds and branches the clueless farmer pawned to them, most likely under the assumption that they magically grew from his fields each night when in reality they were the excess Rosetta wasn't able to sell to Melody as exotic potion ingredients dumped right back onto his untilled land. Material Items took a loss from buying his useless junk, but she managed to reconcile her father to the idea by using the infallible "he doesn't know any better, he has amnesia" excuse.

"Okay, here's the deal, I need your services to.. terminate Zavier," she finally admitted, the last words catching on her tongue like wet sand.

"You want me to kill Zavier?" Mei asked, voice still smooth as glass. Neither denying nor affirming the underlying notion that she was open to being a contract killer. Rosetta wasn't certain if this was such a great idea anymore, but supposed she'd find out if she lived to see tomorrow. She wondered inanely if the weather would be nice.

She swallowed, raking fingers through her hair and smelling the faint scent of Mist's soap under her nails. "No, not _kill_, that's not the right word for it.. Slaughter, that's it, I want you to slaughter Zavier."

A humorless chuckle resounded within the spiraling chamber. "Don't you get dizzy, Rosetta? Having the world revolve around you all the time." Rosetta bristled instinctively at the slighting tone. Mei continued, "I mean, this is a perfect example. You experience a minor conflict with someone and immediately escalate to hiring me to assassinate them so you can avoid showing the slightest bit of humility. Some would call that narcissism."

Her crimson eyes contracted, instantly on her mettle for a scathing rebuttal, "Get your gypsy magic out of my head Mei! And besides, I'm too perfect to be a narcissist. _And_ you know what, if you don't want my business then I'll damn sure take my business elsewhere. Just because you're the entire seedy underbelly of this town doesn't mean I can't outsource!"

A sigh of reified exasperation and contempt. "Fine, I'll do it," she relented, "but it is going to be costly."

Hands fumbled about her pockets and her knuckles grazed over the smooth stone. "Do you accept rocks as payment?"

Mei spoke over her sheepish question: "I want you to bring me the biggest fish in Kardia."

Rosetta scoffed, "Is that all? Or would you like me to dredge up Atlantis as well? Come on, Mei, be reasonable! You're asking me to hook Poseidon by the britches when Zavier's life is barely worth its weight in goldfish. And it's not like you even have to worry about clean up. He's so covered in dirt and grime he's practically self-burying."

"You're paying for my time, as well as a down-payment for my new residence. I can't well enough continue lodging under the roof of the mother whose son I have killed. And Poseidon is not the one I want," she explained, "I want the siren. The siren of Kardia."

"_Fine,_" Rosetta agreed, her eyes rolling so far back into her head she swore she could see her brain exploding from sheer disbelief at what she was about to say. "I'll try the 'slight humility'-thing." Of course, 'slight humility' she extrapolated to mean giving Zavier ten seconds to kill himself before she did it for him.


	4. Lady Ann's Inn

Title: Weathered Stone.

Author: d i s c o FCKN ludicolo

Summary: Rosetta and Zavier face off in a battle of wits and perverted innuendos! Who will prevail?

* * *

By the time Rosetta blazed her hellbent course back through main street she was amazed her thundering warpath had yet to erode the mossy flagstones to dust. She was mustering the fury of a battalion, distilled in the guise of a merchant's daughter to lay siege to the inn harboring a hapless boy who with one glance had stripped her further than nudity, had exposed the fathomless depths of her insecurities.

Generally, Lady Ann's Inn functioned as a careworn asylum for the chronically degenerate. The fact that Lukas resided as a tenant on the ground floor already condemned the otherwise rustically charming building to unlivable status.

That being said, she still felt a pang of regret as she flung the door open and stormed past the foyer, nearly flattening the staircase in her hasty ascent. Rounding the L-shaped bend of the mid-floor landing, her fingers flitted up the banister, pitching forward as she about trampled the person kneeling on the top stair.

Hatred shone in her eyes like liquid bronze, suffused by the fervid light cutting through the stairwell windows. "Where is that son of a bi-" Her tongue ceased of its own accord, evidently applying some latent form of self-preservation. "Of a beautiful, benevolent.. buxomly woman." One hand seized the railing while the other gestured what she hoped was a universal sign for surrender.

Lady Ann rose to her feet, a curtain of brown hair eclipsing her face. Rosetta's expression grew solemn and she edged her left foot down a tread-level, bracing herself for the wrath of a single-mother who had survived the rearing of that_ hellspawn. _ "Don't kill me, I have foes in high places.." she stammered, for fear that if she didn't speak, the muscles in her face would freeze to stone before this Gorgon-woman. Her mind drowned in a flood of curses: _Damn it Rosetta!_ _Foes in high places? Holy hell, are you kidding me! Well, I suppose Zavier counts.. He __is__ on the second story._

Carelessly flicking her hair back, the innkeeper wrung muddy water from a threadbare rag into a bucket that spat droplets back at her bare arms. "Ha ha! Kill you?" Lady Ann laughed. "No, I won't be doing that. Not after I spent the last half-hour on my hands and knees scrubbing the floor." She flourished the tattered rag. Rosetta was reminded of a slice of moldy swiss cheese she once discovered behind a crate in the cellar. Not even the rats would touch it. "That boy came streaking in here, all of butt-naked, leaving muddy prints on my pristine floor.."

"Oh, yeah, some people are just shameless," Rosetta chided in turn, knowing full well she had just tracked in half the beach with her. "So where's Zavier?" She stretched both arms around either banister in a shift to block the sandy footprints smeared across every third stair.

"Follow the mud trail," Ann supplied with a weary motion of her hand. Rosetta nodded and wended around the woman to the second story landing. "Oh, and try not to mention Mist. He seems kind of glum. I think he might have finally worked up the courage to.. You know, rejection is heartbreaking."

She marched up the corridor, duly following the trail of mixed sludge and detritus. _Disgusting, he's like a snail.._ The consequent thought that she hadn't any salt in her arsenal brushed through her mind as she veered toward the end of the hall. The knob clicked ineffectually in its lock.

"Zavier! Open the door!" She trounced the wood panels with a series of kicks aimed exactly at groin-level in case he was actually foolish enough to obey.

"NO!"

"I just want to talk, _really_!" Another kick rattled the cedar door.

"Go away!"

"Fine," she said, pivoting on her heel. "I guess I'll just go back to bathing in the hot springs. Where a lonely and vulnerable Mist lies in wait. But don't worry, I'll clean her up for you afterwards."

Straightaway, he snapped up the bait, wrenching the door open to throttle her neck in a headlock. "Keep your dirty paws off her, Rosetta!"

"Keep your dirty hands off _me_," she gasped indignantly, thrusting her elbow into the side of his head. They reeled back into his room and she tore from his grasp, throwing all her weight at the door. It slammed shut. She spun around, dragging in deep breaths that tasted like pennies and the fetid air. He was doubled over, seething air and kneading his left temple vigorously beneath the upended flap of his leather helmet. Thankfully he had redressed himself before locking her in a choke-hold. Undoubtedly within the lapse of time during her pretended disclosure about returning to finish where she had left off with Mist, judging by the fact that he was wearing his trousers inside-out.

Rosetta rested against the door post, her arm twisted behind her back as she cradled the door knob in her hand. "Look, I don't know what you saw, but.."

He shot her a look that would have been intimidating if not for the tears standing in his eyes. "I saw you practically swallow Mist's head with your gaping whale-mouth!"

She scratched her collarbone idly and feigned innocence. "But, we were just practicing, er.. mouth-to-mouth resuscitation."

"You're _so_ lying! I heard you both talking and the last thing Mist said was: 'Hm? Is there something on my face?', after you finished scrubbing her back. Meaning you were supposed to be cleaning her face, but instead took advantage of her while she was unawares by trying to.. to kiss her!" he sputtered, a deep flush pouring crimson down his neck.

"I was just being thorough!" she protested.

He struck his foot against the floorboards. A tower of dirty plates and cups stacked in alternating layers swayed precariously. "By probing the inside of her mouth? It's all in the transcript, Rosetta. And the verdict is guilty, guilty, guilty. Sentenced to a hundred years in the stocks!"

She prayed the anxiety wouldn't bleed through her baleful glare. He held her future in his grimy hands. Behavior of the sort he had witnessed wasn't expressly forbidden in the realm of Norad, not like the Sechs Empire where so much as a handshake between two women was grounds for exile. Yet, it was borderline lewd, and her father already firmly objected against her getting married. If word got out, that would be the final bit of incentive he needed to ship her off to a convent, and she would never survive inside one of those sanctified soul-crushing factories. She had seen what it had done to Lara.

_Slight humility, now or never.. _"What do you want?" she asked.

Zavier smirked, waving her toward a refuse heap in the corner. "There's a list of demands on my desk." She forded the shallow end of the junk strewn about his floor, resigned to the fact that she had probably contracted tetanus by now.

Once she had settled herself in the chair before his writing desk and excavated the list from a pile of clothing (to her dismay the bulk of the articles were dank socks) and sketches of Mist that contained anatomically impossible bust-to-body ratios, he began ticking off the laundry list of items on his fingers: "First, I want you to stay at least fifty feet away from Mist at all times." Already on her agenda.

"Second, I want a life-time supply of cornflakes." Easy, that amount reckoned out to about half a cornflake at this point.

"Third, I want you to write and perform a puppet show for me daily, but it has to have at least three puppets on stage at all time, don't be afraid to use your feet. _Oh_, and it needs to have an over-arching plot but each episode must be able to stand alone. _And_ it has to star me and Mist. I'll graciously allow you to be within fifty feet of puppet-Mist." Excellent, she could already tell this was going to be her magnum opus.

"Finally, I want you to tell me.. does her carpet match the drapes?"

Rosetta's brow shot up and she mouthed an incredulous _"What?"_ before resuming her deadpan expression. "..I believe she has wood floors."

Wiping his lips with the flat of his hand, Zavier flopped onto his bed and rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. "What I mean is.. Ugh, never mind!" He changed tack, marginally, "At least tell me what color her underwear is."

She bowed her head in her arms. Her heart beat in triple tempo. Extended conversations with Zavier always gave her visible migraines. "What makes you think she wears any? She already dresses like a total slut," she grumbled.

The trestle bed strained as her insult to his beloved Mist jolted him into action. "Hey, at least she's not ashamed of who she is! In fact, she flaunts it. You're just jealous 'cause you look like your mom still dresses you."

A numbing cold washed over her, followed by an intense flash of heat. "My _mother_ is dead."

"Did you inherit her wardrobe?" Zavier provoked.

"_Shut _up." Her vision scoped, all she saw was Zavier and his mocking grin. She couldn't remember when she had stood up.

"Well, I mean, if she's dead then it doesn't matter.."

She dove across the room, shoving his neck to wall under her arm, the back of his head banging against the wood with a sound like an egg cracking. "_Bastard_, shut up! Shut up, you piece of trash!" Her arm drew back, rearing to pound him into oblivion.

"R-rosetta, stop.." Something tickled the back of her neck and she turned, her eyes trailing up a pink sleeve to Tori's fear-stricken face. In that instant her courage dissolved.

"You're lucky your _Tori ex machina_ arrived," she muttered, releasing him.

"I'd rather be lucky than get punched in the face!" he declared in a sing-song voice, grinning famously.

Tori worked her sleeve through her fingers, smoothening out the wrinkles, her voice softer than the silken fabric, "I heard you fighting.. like children.. It's embarrassing Zavier. ..Don't you care? What if the other people in the inn can hear you?"

His chest puffed up to maximum audacity. "Fuck the other people in the inn!" he bellowed. "She attacked me," he accused, pointing a finger at Rosetta's face that was promptly swatted away. "If you hadn't heard, she might've killed me. She can't be trusted, I saw her in the bath kissing Mist."

All eyes on her, Rosetta thrust her hands up in the air beseechingly. "It's not my fault! Look, today in the chapel she gave me the white stone and since I've been.. well, as pathetic as Zavier."

"Hey, don't compare my pure love to the acts of a bath-house pervert!" he shot back.

"It's not _me_, it's this damned cursed stone." She fished through her pocket and flourished the stone with a grimace. "Ever since she gave it to me, every time I'm around her.. I can't stop myself, I turn into a Mist-crazed loon."

"That's.. so romantic," Tori gushed, eyes practically bleeding rainbows.

Zavier had a different opinion. "You're _so_ full of shit."

Blond braid threshing the air as she shook her head, Tori stammered, "N-no.. It's true. I.. read about it.. in a book from the library. H-hold on, please." Without further explanation, the assistant librarian left the room. The door to the next room over creaked open hesitantly and a sound like a wall of books toppling made Rosetta wince.

"What's a library?" Zavier asked, scratching the lump now protruding from where his head had smacked the wall.

Rosetta gazed at him in wonder. Perhaps the blow to his head had killed all two of his brain cells. "It's like a prison for books," she explained wanly.

Tori returned, nose carving the pages of a ponderous treatise appropriately titled: 'The History of Rocks'. "Here," she said, her meek voice framing a fluid summary from snippets out of the passage, "The White Stone.. imbued with passion's flame, smooth as a newborn babe, yet unyielding as adamantine ingots. Bestowed as a gift, it binds as one the hearts of lovers."

A whistle sliced through the heavy silence that followed. "Wow," Zavier said, "So, what d'you supposed would happen if _three_ people shared it?" Swooping forward like a lovestruck vulture, he made a snatch for the stone and Rosetta recoiled, pressing it to her chest in absolute horror. She knew that was the one place in the world he would never dare to venture.

"No, idiot! It'll make you fall for me. Anyway, the closest you're ever getting to a romantic relationship with Mist are the bushes outside her bedroom window!" she taunted.

He gasped. "How do you know about the bushes!"

Behind her aggravated face-palm she descried Tori's tentative face, trembling as though about to burst. "I.. I think it's impossible for either of you.. I mean, it's just my opinion, but.. the chances of either of you marrying Mist are.. well.. there are none." She set the book on the bed and crawled onto the mattress, cupping their shoulders with hands that shook despite their warmth. "I.. I'm so sorry, Zavier. You're the son of an innkeeper.. and Rosetta, your father.." Rosetta caught the girl's gravely apologetic glance and nodded, shrugging off the hand on her shoulder so that she could grab it in her own, tacitly assuring Tori that she already knew and was fine. Perfectly peachy. "And.. well.. Mist is a peasant farmer.. a serf. Mom would never allow a marriage.. Maybe in a fairy tale it would work.. but never in real life."

Zavier punched his fist into a pillow wrathfully. "So what! Then I'll just have to elope with her!"

"Great, I'll hold the ladder," Rosetta offered.

"But she lives in a one-story house."

"Fine, the stepladder then. Don't take it literally.."

Tori giggled, suppressing her grin behind the folds of her dress. "Actually.. it's probably more likely.. that you two will be married.. our parents are on good terms and it is the best match available.. the innkeeper's son and merchant's daughter. So it won't do any good for you.. to ruin the reputation of your future wife, Zavier."

She could feel the shock manifesting as a silent scream on her face before swiveling her head to glance at Zavier. But the boy was already bounding across the bed toward an open window above his overturned dresser. "No!" he shrieked. "I'd rather die!" He straddled the sill, ducking his head out, the breeze fluttering at his tawny hair and stripping off his helmet before two pairs of arms pulled him kicking and screaming to the floor of his bedroom.

* * *

"Are you sure he's going to be.." Rosetta twirled her hand for lack of words. Words of concern for Zavier simply didn't exist in her vocabulary.

Tori glanced back at the bound and gagged form of her brother, the chair he was tied to falling over with a crash as he struggled and squirmed for the window. "Yes.. Don't worry, he used to try this every week on bath-night.. So my mom installed an artificial pond below his room.. Solves both problems."

"All right, but I really owe you one. You have no idea how many puppet shows you may have saved me from performing." Drawing her hand up, she anointed Tori with the imaginary offices of her sacred favor. "I hereby award you, Tori, one hundred Rosetta-points." Then, in a low voice, "Rosetta-points are not redeemable anywhere."

"Oh.." With downcast face, Tori bowed her head in acceptance.

"What? What is it?"

"My Rosetta-points are nonredeemable.." she squeaked piteously.

"I'm only joking. I still owe you a favor."

The light shed from the hallway gleamed intermittently off Tori's glasses as she looked up with renewed joy. "Ah, good. Because I do.. need your help."

* * *

They were standing in Tori's room, book mounds looming large on every available surface, and it seemed that when every nook and niche in the room had been crammed with literature, Tori had gotten innovative in her storage. Her mattress was borne on stacked books, architected such that they extended into the upright arms of a four-poster bed. Every surface chockablock with books, aside from the two inch hole in the back corner which swallowed Rosetta's finger to the knuckle, extending straight down into the ceiling of the room below.

She hazarded a guess, "..You want me to fix this hole?"

"No.." The hem of Tori's skirts brushed against Rosetta's bent knee as she leaned over with a spyglass in hand. "Here, you should look.. for yourself."

She tamped it into the hole and Rosetta peered into the lens, straight into the bowels of hell itself.

"No way." She lurched to her feet and turned to leave. "No way, I'm done. I've seen enough."

A hand clasped her wrist, loosely, applying no pressure or force. "R-rosetta, please, just listen.."

"You have one minute to explain."

"O-okay, well.. I heard this sound one night, when I couldn't sleep.. it sounded like.. moaning, coming from this hole, so I looked and.. it was Lukas, scribbling on a piece of paper.. But every few words he would stop and pound his forehead while saying: 'No, not good enough, it needs to be better, she deserves nothing less than perfection.' So I watched as he wrote, reams and reams of poetry, for hours, in utter anguish.."

Tori's fingers tightened. "Rosetta.. I think he's writing about.. about me."

"What? Er.. what makes you think that?" she asked.

"B-because," Tori looked flustered, her voice cracking like the treads in the stairs, unsteady but solid, "because he kept mentioning a 'flaxen haired maiden'.."

_That creep,_ she thought, _violating me with his god-awful poetry._ "But how do you know it's you and not, uhm, Mist?"

Her smile grew sheepish. "W-well.. I don't mean any offense.. but he also used the word 'intelligent'.."

_Wait, he thinks I'm intelligent. _ "Fine, I believe you. And you do realize this hole is two-way, right?" Confusion overtook Tori's heartened expression. "Never mind.. Just promise to keep it covered with a heavy tome from now on. Preferably some sort of religious text, open to a page that admonishes the sin of lust."

"Uhh.. sure.. but can I trust you with something, Rosetta?"

"Tell me what it is first."

"It's a poem and, well, a love confession," she spoke rapidly, "I've tried to give it to him.. but.. I'm too afraid.. what if he reads it and laughs.. it's not very good.. but I want him to know my true feelings. I don't want him to cry anymore. Not over me."

* * *

She ran full force down the stairs, tripping on the fourth step down and scraping her knee against a protuberance of sand crusting off the ledge. The light outside was beginning to fail, concentrated in lurid oranges and reds to the west.

"Rosetta, can it be!" She started at the sound of Lukas's boisterous call. The feckless minstrel was loitering along the wayside, rapping his staff on the flagstones, the dull clunk of the wood muted by his musical voice, "The rose of my heart. Eyes blooming red like the flowers I long to pluck for your wedding bouquet."

Terrible, just awful; she assessed his work as lackluster and trite. _He wants to pluck my eyes? What the hell?_

"It doesn't rhyme," she curtly responded, lengthening her stride.

"Dearest Rosetta, my verse for you is spontaneous as wildfire! Our love needs no conventions," he said, shuffling after her.

She rounded on him aggressively. "First of all, we have no love to speak of! And second.. You know what? Never mind that, I have a message for you." As she spoke, she took a folded note from her pocket, pressed flat from the stone that weighed heavy at her hip.

While she dipped her head toward his ear, his voice rippled across her cheek, "Anything, Rosetta, I could listen to your sweet-everythings all day."

Seconds later, she left him to read Tori's poem at his leisure. The whisper she had imparted in his ear still tingling on her lips:

"_To you, from Zavier."_

Vengeance and recompense never made such a delicious medley.

* * *

Author's Note: Yeah, the last chapter was a bit of a throwaway one, so I understand not getting any reviews for it. But now that the first story-arc is over, your feedback is appreciated and encouraged (tell me what you want to see more or less of). Also, I'm not sure exactly what constitutes an 'M'-rated fanfic versus 'T'.. this chapter seems a bit borderline as far as the dialogue goes. Or maybe I'm just a prude? Anyway, thank you for reading. I updated the information about this story on my profile page, as will be the case from now on after each new chapter.


	5. The Farmstead

Title: Weathered Stone.

Author: d i s c o FCKN ludicolo

* * *

The brook babbled westward over her wrists as she scoured handfuls of water through trembling fingers. An experimental whiff of her palms made Rosetta envy snakes and all manner of creature capable of shedding tarnished skin. She decapitated the heads off vagrant water lilies, submerging her arms beneath the swift-flowing spray and vigorously macerating rosy petals between her hands. Clear water and the earthy fragrance tempered the fire kindling in her soul, quenched opaque the incandescent glow of her meteoric rise to victory.

Her reflection, aswirl in the current and eddies, curdled and fluttered by turns as she stooped over the curved verge of the bridge connecting country to township. How much of her life had she wasted appraising herself in mirrors, pools of water, the convex backs of silver spoons, contemplating her appearance to the deprivation of self-reflection?

Loose pebbles staggering about the riverbed pulled thoughts of the white stone to the forefront of her mind, and she found it a trying task to separate past intentions from the present feelings welling in her heart.

_Ah, well,_ she thought, wetting dry lips with flicks of her tongue, _I'll burn that bridge when I get to it. _Or how did that old chestnut go again? Her father bleated them regularly as the church's belfry tolled and she muddled them carelessly at every opportunity.

She raised her hands to her face a second time, nose immediately pinching up in revolution at the putrid stench. _Great, now my hands smell of flowers _and_ Zavier's moldy socks._

A whirring sound, like cicadas trapped on the wrong side of the window, swayed her forward until her hands caught the pales she was wedged between, balance slipping marginally under her damp grasp. Her knee clipped the railing as she twisted around, blinking rapidly against the sun and discerning an arced crescent pitching through the air straight for her. It smacked the wind out of her chest and landed writhing on her lap. Flared gills opening and clamping shut tickled the splinters bristling from her leg, their desperate suction capturing a half-life in death throes.

Scrabbling to contain the fish, the second her fingers grazed its flank the struggle ended in a sharp gasp. At her noxious touch the slapping tail-fin fell limp over the side of her leg as a shiver cascaded down its prismatic scales. "Come on! I don't smell that bad," she grumbled in a voice drowned under a loud cry above her:

"Sorry!" it wailed, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to—" The timbers shook underneath her as someone drew near from the opposite railing; it was the farmer she was forced to love halfheartedly now. "Rosetta, is that you?" he asked, squinting to filter out the glare of sunset behind her; however, she was facing thus that he was in clear view. A circlet of light gilded his brown bangs and she withheld a nervous giggle when he attempted to scrape his right heel back into a regal bow while his left half ruffled up the red drapery of his overskirt and dipped into an apologetic curtsy. "Thank you, did you manage to save my fish?"

"If by _'save'_ you mean kill," she said slowly.

The crook of his arm fell flat and he looked despairingly at his fishing rod. "Yes, that's what I meant," Raguna replied, offering a gloved hand to help her up. "I hope I'm not bothering you."

"No, it's fine, bother away!" She unloaded the fish into his open hand, rising to her feet and taking hold of her empty hand cart with extraordinary aplomb considering she felt like melting through the timbers never to be seen again. He jumbled the items in his arms to accommodate the extra two pounds.

After he had settled his burden, the threads of stress crinkling his forehead undid themselves only to restitch his brows together in thought. Rosetta stared intently at him out of the corner of her eye, trying to read his face and attune herself to the inner workings of his mind. _Raguna, tell me your secrets, _she thought mischievously. In this case, his blank expression was extremely telling.

"Well, anyway, it looks like I need to improve my fishing ability," he said placidly, as though he had just returned after a week's journey up sheer rock to view the prospects commanded from a faraway mountain.

_Hurry! Say something cute and edgy, but funny also, and it needs to be socially relevant! _"No, you're perfect.." she began, ending tongue tied with nothing more to say.

His forehead regained its crinkles as his brows lifted in surprise. "You think so? I think I could stand for a little improvement."

She blurted out the first slightly amusing thought to flicker to mind, "Come on, you're just fishing for complements now. Your skill is truly at the, er, finnacle of greatness..?" Her mind flew into a frenzy: _Puns! ..You're dead to me._

"Uh.. what?"

"Laugh, I control your pay," Rosetta prompted, waving her hand about as if casting magic, if magic could be summoned from the arcane power of self-delusion.

Raguna chuckled weakly, taking his fate in stride as the only sane person in their remote town. "Don't you think it's strange that they don't return to the first forest, the fish I mean?" he asked, tightly gripping the tail-fin slung over one shoulder.

Slender gaps in the bridge revealed glimpses of water overshadowed by the wood slats. She lifted her gaze after a moment, but could only meet his eyes with glances stolen out of the periphery of her vision. "Not really, Father Wesley says that only monsters can be reborn in the first forest."

"Why?"

"Because.. religion," she answered flatly. Reeds creeping out of wanes in the bridge snapped under the wheels of her cart as she began to trundle forward. "Well, um.. I've heard it's because only creatures that hate humanity can exist in the first forest."

"Oh, I see. Do you know why that is?" He walked lockstep with her for the first few paces before flagging behind and spending the remainder of their crossing either compensating with lunging strides or mincing his steps in wait for her.

Her eyes assumed a distant expression, as though she were staring not through slats over a narrow river, but crevices that peered into the molten heart of the earth. "My father told me it's because our ancestors laid a curse on us so that we can never be reborn." She took the liberty of anticipating his next twenty questions and then embellishing even more explanation onto that for good measure, "A long time ago there was a war between the gods and the earth. Every mortal beast fought to subdue the omnipotent, except for one: we humans were that one. When the slain gods rained from the sky, to the victors went the spoils: the elves took their longevity, the goblins got their beauty, the unicorns their blood-lust.. or maybe it was the other way around.. and supremacy over the elements was divided amongst the others.

"As for humans, we took the earth. According to the deities' last will, all the god-slaying monsters were banished to the first forest. After a person dies, if they've lived faithfully to their kith and kin they return to the earth, to sleep peacefully forever. But if they cast aside all others and live a life of sin against their fellow kind, they will be banished to the first forest, for only those who hate humanity can exist in that monstrous place. There you are fated to be tortured and killed by the monsters of the forest, then reborn only to suffer and be killed again, ad infinitum.

"Sure, some monsters still live on earth, the dwarves in the bottommost caves, elves in the inhospitable deserts, and goblins on the frozen cliffs, but we own the vast expanses of land that they would gladly kill us for."

"But what would cause such horrific and continued bloodshed? And what does all that have to do with an ancestral curse?" he asked through a starry-eyed daze, his blue eyes dazzling her with their wonder.

"Our ancestors were the curse and the cause. They were the original inhabitants of first forest, they provoked the gods to attack the earth." By now her voice was hollow as her footsteps over the bridge, readily repeating the lore that had managed to percolate through her stubborn head; obviously, it followed that the entire story was as voluminous to tell as it was tedious to hear.

Raguna's voice in turn grew dim to her ears, which were focused on distilling the ripples of words from her memories. "I don't understand.. how could anyone do such a thing?" he asked.

"The earth spoke to them, and told them to betray their loyalties, to trade immortality for ten seconds of fame.. and an eternity of infamy. The earth wanted to eat the gods and gain control of the universe.. and it almost didn't succeed," she concluded, feeling the nonsensical urge to meld her fingers on either hand and flex them outwards with the satisfying crack of brittle bones, as if she had finished writing the last page in a very long book.

Raguna's head, which had been dipping forward as she increasingly added information to it, reeled up. "Wait! The earth killed the gods and now controls the universe?"

She looked at him, mental and physical exhaustion salient in both the brevity and tone of her reply, "Yeah."

"Why isn't everyone more alarmed about this then?" he questioned, an abstract expression encumbering him even as it shed a fathom's depth of perplexity from his face.

"Because not everyone believes it," she responded quietly, the utterance of those words seemed to disturb tremendous feelings in her.

"Who doesn't?" he asked in naïve disbelief.

She rolled her eyes, mildly embarrassed by his ignorance, blushing faintly as she discovered it was actually somewhat cute how unworldly he was. "The elves, for one. With ears that big, you'd think they would at least be able listen to reason. But they think _we're_ the ones who killed the gods."

Then, as was often the case, he surpassed her expectations, speaking with unmistakeable acumen, "..I wonder if that's why kingdoms fight wars over land. Because they believe the earth is all-powerful, and maybe controlling all of it will, I don't know, give them a hold on that power." Not even she had thought of that, and she had lived on the frontiers of the Norad kingdom all her life, with the Sechs Empire barbarians breathing down the back of her neck as they waited for the ideal chance to slit her throat.

* * *

A short silence elapsed as they approached the plowed fields. Far off, sheaves of grain were thrust against one another in sparse huddles like a windswept bivouac on the cusp of surrender; every breath was taken in measured sips that reminded her of chewing on ice cubes.

"Are you cold?" Raguna asked, his face illuminated with a smile that numbed her body more than the wind ever would. "The temperature always drops when the Shindra water the fields, no idea why, but sometimes I worry they'll freeze and I'll wake up to a field of full living ice sculptures.. Though I'm sure it wouldn't do them any harm, they seem to hold a mastery over all forms of water." He had a habit of rambling ceaselessly about his tamed beasts; but Rosetta supposed everyone needed a hobby to relieve the doldrums of life. She collected rare and foreign coins like a magpie, and he chose to sleep five hours a night, eat one meal a day, and constantly venture into subterranean dungeons, redeeming monsters with the power of love. Honestly, she had no idea how he was still alive.

"This isn't.. c-cold.." she mumbled through cracks in her frozen lips; "Cold is when you have icicles hanging in the back of your throat." After he had survived his first winter in Kardia, then he would be acquainted with cold.

They pressed onward, through a furrow hedged at her right-hand side with paces of leafy plants swagged by peppers perhaps two shades darker than their green stalks. On her left, squat carrot tops flirted with the wind.

As the row was too narrow to afford them space to walk side-by-side, she took the lead and he trailed behind, stopping to bend down on his haunches every couple minutes to peel a snail off a leaf, gingerly pocketing it for safe transport to the greensward beyond his fields. She thought she might walk forever in these furrows, letting her heart simmer, bestirred by the sound of his footfalls drawing closer.

"Thank you," he spoke after the growing darkness had edited out all the definition in the world and shaded his voice in whispers, "you saved me from going hungry tonight." Uncertainty clutched his words now: "..Would you like some? Fresh fish, there's nothing like it."

The invitation to dinner rendered her speechless for a moment. "Yes! I'd love to," she said rapidly, as if trying to atone for her awkward silence by speaking fast enough to turn back time.

She spoke even faster when she heard him unsheathe his knife. The gathering night sky wrought serpentine constellations over its recurved blade like stained glass tracery. "Oh, wait, no, never mind, I already have stew cooking at home, and my father's allergic to seafood.. I swear, if I ever leave home for a week he'll eat his arms and legs rather than cook anything himself. He only really keeps me around to fix his meals." The wind gobbled up her sigh as his knife slid back into its scabbard. Her stomach was performing twirls as it were and she didn't think she could bear the smell of flayed fish.

Raguna responded slowly but without hesitation, "Well, I don't know, I think it's more than that.."

"W-what do you mean?"

"Well, you also help manage the store and collect shipments. I don't know how Material Items would survive without your presence and constant support."

Her shoulders drooped. "I can imagine the roof is collapsing as we speak."

"I mean it, Kardia depends on you Rosetta."

Those words, spoken earnestly from that man, left her awestruck at their ineffable majesty.

After half a minute of walking in silence, he fumbled for an expedient way to turn the conversation, "Uhm.. do you know how you can tell if fish is really fresh? I remember this one time I poured soy sauce on a plate of raw octopus tentacles and they turned purple.." Ah well, they couldn't all be gems.

Rosetta's stomach lurched again and she scarcely avoided grinding his peppers under the renegade wheels of her cart. "Ew, I would never, _ever_ eat anything beyond the indigo hue–wait, you _remember_? You're regaining your memories?"

"No.. The first two weeks I was here I just didn't have a stove.. and before that, I can't remember.. it feels like that part of me is empty,"–a low growl arose–"or maybe that's just my stomach.. Ha ha, I shouldn't have skipped lunch. I'm hungry enough to eat a rock."

"_Really_?" Discreetly as possible, she nudged the white stone out of her pocket to flatten the top of one of his burrowed carrots before it pitched down-slope.

Raguna tripped as the stone stumbled across his path. He checked himself before he fell into a mud facial, exclaiming in strident tones, "Ah! What? A rock? I thought I got them all this morning." Hands laden with fish and pole and pockets full, he said, "Uhm.. Rosetta, can you get it for me? I don't want to crush the snails."

"Oh, well, I _would_ but my back's been killing me lately. You know, because all I'm good for is carrying this whole incompetent town on my shoulders," she quipped pointedly.

"Okay then, it's best you don't overexert yourself." Her shafts of sarcasms went unheard by the world's second most oblivious farmer. Ranking only slightly behind Mist because Rosetta had once witnessed her rival staring vacantly into the sun, and when questioned had said airily that she was looking for the "off switch", whatever that alluded to.

"What? So you're just going to leave it until erosion finally kicks in five hundred thousand years from now! Rocks are Kardia's most valuable resource, Raguna! Our most ancient and bleeding edge technology! Why do you think the Sechs Empire wants to annex us so badly?" she raved, misplaced passion surging out of her in waves.

He absorbed her energy stoically, resigned to his fate as a lightning-rod for manic outbursts. "Okay, okay. I'll get to it after dinner."

"Promise you'll remember?"

"Of course, I never forget!" If he wasn't so completely transparent she would have considered that legitimate sarcasm.

* * *

A pang of unrest nipped at her heart as she unfastened the shipping box's latch and rent up the lid in one dreaded motion, truly more of a flinch than a fling, as though she were folding linens threaded with spiders. Before their paths diverged, Raguna swore by the moon and stars that he had evicted every last eight-legged devil from the bin. Ever since last season's incident, she vowed never again to unknowingly become the surrogate mother of another spider egg sac priming to hatch.

Contrary to her father's aversion, she had found the mites a fascinating addition to the house until their maturation; overnight, it seemed, the upstairs living quarters had been re-purposed into a retirement home for a thousand diminutive spinsters who collectively paid for their room and board with gossamer tapestries and tea cozies.

Tentatively, her hand hinged over the clapboard box before swooping in for the first grab: it decidedly wasn't a spider. Neither was it a turnip.

The languid shape she had mistaken for a lump of produce stirred slowly under her touch. She rapidly withdrew her hand, face livid.

"Huh.. Rosetta?" a bleary voice murmured, sounding vast and hollow inside the wooden bin.

"Mist! What are you doing?" She violently massacred the subconscious part of her that wished desperately to tromp straight into Raguna's farmhouse and request that he allow her to buy off Mist's body in small portions as her income afforded: starting with her face because she wasn't _quite_ that kinky. That degrading thought refused to be subdued without crying its last words: "I could practically own your face right now, I hope you realize!"

"My face? What would you do with that? We already almost have the same face.. We're like twins. Or clones. We're like twin clones," she said amid content yawns.

"That doesn't.. None of that is.. Whatever, I need to get the shipment. So clear out," Rosetta brusquely replied.

"Oh, yes, that was my plan. I didn't get any sleep last night, I stayed up daydreaming until morning, so I decided to take an afternoon nap," Mist explained in her roundabout way, "but I didn't want to sleep for too long, so I picked a place where someone was bound to find me."

"Remind me to have Raguna run the shipping bin through with his sword the next time he checks for pests," she said crossly and with excessive eye twitching. They both knew her words were empty menace.

"Okay, good idea, that'll help me slice these turnips. They're rather hard to swallow whole.."

The candid confession, further substantiated by an uplifted turnip gridded with overlapping tooth marks, shed light on what she assumed had been a recent chitter infestation ravaging the bin.

"What is wrong with you? Do you have any idea how much money Raguna's lost because of you? He probably could have expanded his house, gotten married, and had three children by now if it weren't for your gluttony!"

"..Wow, I had no idea. I can eat _speculations_?" That she stated this matter-of-factly, without clever intentions or any degree of sarcasm, infuriated Rosetta to no end.

"Just _get out_," she snapped, hoisting her rival up by the wrist.

"But I do give Raguna free turnip seeds sometimes and– Ah, Rosetta, your hand smells strange."

"Well, I was using _your_ soap today and wiping all the sludge off _your_ ungrateful back. I could practically hear the germs screaming for mercy."

"No, that can't be it. My soap smells like this." Mist rotated her wrist in Rosetta's grip and flexed it backward, proffering a scent that inebriated her aching heart, pressing her toward one lawless plunge: to cast off that sleeve, to trail kisses up her arm, around the sun-flecked recess of her collar, to hover a breath's distance up that swan's neck, to further lavish kisses on those lips that dawn's fingertips did caress in rosy shadow; but the mind was always more callous than the heart. If her heart was light as a feather she might be able to take such flights of fancy. Instead, she brooded earthbound, duplicity a cumbersome ballast to bear.

The mawkish voice continued to weave its rambling course throughout her mind's stupor: "This smells more like.. the time I tried to preserve orange juice in a tin can in the back of my closet and rediscovered it two years later. Sort of like that.. Rosetta, are you all right? Your face looks like it could light a candlewick."

She let fall Mist's arm, touching her own inflamed cheeks in the dark, trying to snuff out the blush with her icy fingers. "I'm fine.. I just got sunburned, that's all," she lied. _Why do I have to be one of those blushing maiden types!_

"At night? Amazing."

"_No_, not at night. I was at the.. uh.. beach today, talking to Mei by that garish seashell."

"Oh, you should be careful, I heard that shell leads to other worlds. You can get sucked in and end up in another dimension. ..Or maybe that was just a dream I had, hmm.." Mist tipped her head forward while swinging one leg over the bin's ivy-clad side, pinching overgrown weeds between her toes. As she tossed her other leg over, she handed off the incriminating bulb and Rosetta dangled it by the stem for a final inspection before it merited a place in her cart, heaped under a steadily rising mountain of crops, baubles, and the occasional rock. The cornucopian harvests reaped by fall's waning might last until the meltwater streamed from Mount Gigant's pass and opened up the trade routes for spring.

"Do you even know what a 'dimension' is, Mist?" she huffed over an armful of eggplants stacked up to her chin.

Untangling the ribbon from her hair, Mist combed out the leaves, loosed downy knots, and with a light blow spread the amber-colored wings of a beetle scrambling in a moonstruck daze across her hand. "Well.. Zavier always asks me for my 'dimensions', but I never know what he's talking about."

"Tell him you're one-dimensional," Rosetta said with a hint of irony. The corner of her eye caught a flash of perplexity quavering over her rival's face at this remark, then Raguna drew the curtains inside his lit house and the circle of illumination around them sunk away into darkness. Until now she hadn't considered that her overt hostility might be perceived as anything out of the ordinary. But if she usually regarded Mist with weary disdain any heightened aggression in her tone or attitude might be seen as a front for other hidden feelings that at best might be guessed as something sinister at work, and at worst correctly interpreted. "Look, forget about it, I've had a stressful day." She rummaged through the cart, pulling out a turnip. Flicking a scrap of parchment from her pocket as well as a sliver of charcoal she was accustomed to nibbling at to allay her stomach's intense desire to commit harakiri whenever she consumed unfavorable food combinations, Rosetta scribbled off a few lines, using the turnip as a writing surface. The entranced look on Mist's face fell to ruinous dismay as she was handed the items, minus the turnip. "That's what you owe Raguna for two weeks of free turnips."

Rosetta wheeled her laden cart to the edge of the fields, turning to toss another object Mist's way. "This one's on me," she said.

The turnip bounced off Mist's shoulder and the girl stooped after its rolling course along the grass. "But what about Raguna's children?" she called out after she had secured the precious vegetable and finished admiring its white form. Rosetta was a dwindling shadow crossing through the fields.

In return, all she heard was what might have been either the wind rushing forth or an exasperated sigh.

Hugging the turnip to her chest, Mist's eyes glazed over as she read the etchings on the parchment and began to study a crease along its corner. Carefully, she peeled apart the parchment folded to a quarter of its full extent. Her hold tightened, perhaps as an anchor against the swelling gale, her eyes widening before the unfurled page.

* * *

Raguna stepped off his porch, an upheld lantern carving ochre light into the darkness. Down the sloping field he glimpsed two shadows slipping through the furrows, the furthest ambling along, pursued from behind by a fleetly moving silhouette. Then he turned his gaze to the half dozen strawberries, red marvels each roughly the size of his fist, cinched in a gunnysack at his waist. Perhaps he was exempt from tonight's strawberry tax.

He resumed walking, directing his steps toward the brambles away from the field, on the prowl for the snails he had freed. Tonight he vowed the uprooted mollusks would feast like kings on the fruits of his labor.


End file.
